During the past two or three years, this picture has become more evident and it is dealing a worrisome blow to the old-fashioned virtue of trust.

Not all white-collar thieves are managers or the well-heeled. Some are clerks for small businesses or individuals who rely on them to do the right thing.

Several months ago, for example, a secretary was convicted of forging more than 70 cheques totalling S$1.5mil over two years and jailed six-and-a-half years.

She was the personal assistant to an Indonesian boss, who had entrusted her with cheque books for her to pay his bills.

She inflated the amounts and siphoned off the money, in one instant using it to buy a S$242,000 luxury car for her boyfriend.

Surprisingly, despite the big Internet community here, cyber crimes remain very low. The number of youths warned or prosecuted for computer offences had dropped from 50 in 2001 to 21 last year, a 58% decline.

Few cities operate businesses as stringently as Singapore when it comes to anti-fraud measures.

Many companies have their own audit committees to plug possible loopholes for cheating or pilfering, with strict procedures for managers handling cheques.

There is, however, no complete safeguard. Companies have to work with a certain level of trust, and it is in this area that human frailty shows.

In the past two years, there have been at least half a dozen cases of bank break-ins with losses of some S$20mill – not by men using guns but their own employees hacking into or manually redirecting clients’ accounts.

As I’m writing this, there are two newspaper reports of mismanaged funds by well-known personalities.

A former People’s Action Party MP, Lawrence Sia, was expelled as president of the Singapore Teachers’ Union, a post he had held for 32 years.

A meeting of the central council decided to sack him for mismanagement of union funds. Details were not known.

The union's general treasurer, David Chia, and its deputy general secretary, Daisy Yew, were suspended in April, pending investigations into an STU group personal accident scheme profit commission.

Most young Singaporeans know little of Sia, but older ones do. The former PAP stalwart and deputy secretary-general in the National Trades Union Congress has vowed to clear his name.

The second case involved the Singapore Tenpin Bowling Congress, hit by a scandal of missing funds. Its president, Dr Ong Teck Thian, is believed to have fled.

On Monday, the association’s former general manager, Leonard Michael King, 44, was charged with three counts of abetting Dr Ong to commit criminal breach of trust involving S$31,000.

Rumours of financial impropriety surfaced last year when the Singapore Bowling Academy, a company co-owned and managed by STBC, folded after accumulating more than S$300,000 in rental arrears.

These sums paled in comparison to the case involving Chia Teck Leng, an executive of Asia Pacific Breweries (Singapore) who stands accused of having cheated four banks into giving him credit of S$160mil.

This is Singapore’s worst fraud case, overshadowing Singapore Airlines supervisor Teo Cheng Kiat’s embezzlement of almost S$35mil from the airline in 2000. He was sentenced to 24 years’ jail.

(In April 2001, Kwek Chee Tong, 53, former managing director of public-listed Kian Ho Bearings, was sentenced to nine years' jail for misappropriating more than S$5mil of company money.)

Breweries executive Chia, 43, had lived the life of a high-roller in casinos in Victoria, Australia, where he had deposited a staggering A$190mil. His crime spree spread over four years.

Crime in Singapore has generally not been driven by poverty. Even in these bad economic times, it is more likely to be caused by greed, gambling woes, or simply a short cut to wealth.

But the hard times are bringing out operators who break or bend the laws to make money, including bribery, cheating and kickbacks.

(So far this year, 540 people have blown the whistle on bosses, colleagues or contacts for fraud and corruption.)

Other cases involve gross misrepresentation of facts when selling insurance, investment services or second-hand cars.

Two months ago, an employer inflated his workers’ salaries – even paying more in central provident funds – so that he could apply for higher training grants for them.

(The government pays a skills-upgrading subsidy for some workers based on the percentage of their salaries.)

Another tough-time trick is fraudulent insurance claims by businessmen whose factories or cargoes “suddenly catch fire.”

In August, one such claim for S$1.24mil for fire-damaged goods was withdrawn because of “suspicious circumstances.”

For small cities like Singapore, white-collar crime ranks high because it undermines business. This is despite arguments that courts should go easier on offenders because no one is physically hurt.

Easier sentencing, it is feared, will only encourage it.

If the cancer spreads, Singapore’s reputation for integrity will suffer. Foreigners may see the people as lacking in trustworthiness and avoid doing business here.

“The chief cause is the consumerist society where money is god, cash is king,” explained a corner shop barber. “So people are taking short cuts in making money.”

A recent global survey has shown Singaporeans as a less trusting people than others in China, Japan and the United States.

The Sunday Times reported that a local test showed only one Singaporean in four helped when approached by a stranger to lend S$20 because she had lost her wallet.

The world survey says that fewer than two in 10 Singaporeans feel that most people can be trusted. The rest say the state needs to be very careful in dealing with people.

Why the distrust? National University of Singapore sociologist Tan Ern Ser puts it down to a loose social network in a relatively young nation.

The intensifying rat race may be another explanation.

“We tend to see someone else as a competitor who might stab us in the back, rather than a collaborator whom we can trust and work with,” said Tan.

o Seah Chiang Nee is a veteran journalist and editor of the information website littlespeck.com (e-mail: cnseah2000@ littlespeck.com )

                                                            Home